Leading People In A Way That Honors God

In 2021, Polydeck set out to wow customers, improve profitable growth, create a winning work culture, and improve on our past successes. Together, we worked hard to achieve our goals and have succeeded.

            Despite labor challenges, supply chain constraints, rising raw material costs, and the continued threat of COVID-19, we were still able to maintain the best lead times in the industry combined with a record year in product quality. Our record bookings and shipments coupled with our “Best Place to Work” certification proved to us just how strong our culture and teams are. The launch of our new product category- PROTEX- and Customer Satisfaction score of 93.34% (World Class status) is a primary indicator of our position as leaders in the industry.

            As we continue to focus on continuous improvement especially in the areas of environmental, social responsibility, research and development, and the launch of new products, we still maintain that our employees—the Polydeck family—is our greatest strength.

One of the most rewarding projects that we worked on this year was leadership. Identified leaders at Polydeck underwent what we have called “The Leadership Commitment Training,” which is a 7-week cohort training series taught by Polydeck’s Senior Leadership Team.

I was honored to kick off the series and teach on one of Polydeck’s core business values--Leading people in a way that honors God. Some key highlights from my research included:

Leadership is:

• not power; it is a responsibility
• benefits all when done right
• daily effort; it is intentional

A word on each-

Leadership is not power, it is a responsibility

When we look at the key leaders in our lives, we realize that it isn’t their ability to make decisions that we value most about them, but the ability to make the BEST decisions. BEST decisions are made when each team member can contribute their thoughts and ideas toward reaching the common goal. A great leader brings out the best in their team, making sure all voices are heard, and decisions are made together for the betterment of all people--leadership is for people, not over people.

Leadership benefits all when done right

Good leadership inspires, challenges, anticipates problems, rewards, and uses mistakes as teaching tools--even people you disagree with, feel valued and led when leadership is done right.

Leadership is a daily effort; it is intentional

It is important to remember that leadership can be learned. In my experience, it is a daily effort, not just a class you attend or a certificate that you attain, or even a document you sign. It is also important to recognize that leadership is a process. Processes take time and growth cannot be done in isolation.

As we look forward to another successful year together, our hope is that we continually wow you, our customers, not only with our level of service but our commitment to leading well.  We hope to serve you and continually conduct our business in a way that honors God. Thank you for partnering with us and have a wonderful rest of the year.

Written by Ronald D. Kuehl II, President of Polydeck